Page - 225 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: What are we to do, then? Shall we break off in the middle? CALLICLES: You shall judge for yourself. SOCRATES: Well, but people say that ‘a tale should have a head and not break off in the middle,’ and I should not like to have the argument going about without a head (compare Laws); please then to go on a little longer, and put the head on. CALLICLES: How tyrannical you are, Socrates! I wish that you and your argument would rest, or that you would get some one else to argue with you. SOCRATES: But who else is willing?—I want to finish the argument. CALLICLES: Cannot you finish without my help, either talking straight on, or questioning and answering yourself? SOCRATES: Must I then say with Epicharmus, ‘Two men spoke before, but now one shall be enough’? I suppose that there is absolutely no help. And if I am to carry on the enquiry by myself, I will first of all remark that not only I but all of us should have an ambition to know what is true and what is false in this matter, for the discovery of the truth is a common good. And now I will proceed to argue according to my own notion. But if any of you think that I arrive at conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute me, for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am saying; I am an enquirer like yourselves, and therefore, if my opponent says anything which is of force, I shall be the first to agree with him. I am speaking on the supposition that the argument ought to be completed; but if you think otherwise let us leave off and go our ways. GORGIAS: I think, Socrates, that we should not go our ways until you have completed the argument; and this appears to me to be the wish of the rest of the company; I myself should very much like to hear what more you have to say. SOCRATES: I too, Gorgias, should have liked to continue the argument with Callicles, and then I might have given him an ‘Amphion’ in return for his ‘Zethus’; but since you, Callicles, are unwilling to continue, I hope that you will listen, and interrupt me if I seem to you to be in error. And if you refute me, I shall not be angry with you as you are with me, but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul. CALLICLES: My good fellow, never mind me, but get on. SOCRATES: Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument:—Is the pleasant the same as the good? Not the same. Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good? or the good 225